HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray vs. SSD vs. Scalers

Blu-Ray managed to pull a fast one on HD-DVD last week. As some of you may remember, there was a lot of talk regarding the future of HD formats recently. Everybody from the adult movies industry to the disk producers managed to give at least an interview in which they talked about the future of HD.

However, one pretty interesting thing which caught my attention happened at CES. Blu-Ray was declared the winner of the HD war. This announcement, based on some unknown ratings, left everyone (HD-DVD camp included) with their eyes in the sun. We know this is not true, but the supporters of HD-DVD have to understand that this conflict is far from over. PS3 will jump up in sales during 2007 so more Blu-Ray content is expected to come up.

This conflict seems to have gotten everyone so confused that each partner does as it feels. Time Warner announced a hybrid disk while LG announced a hybrid player. The adult industry likes HD-DVDs better because they are cheaper to replicate but "Crank" has just been launched on Blu-Ray.

I wish I had a better broadband connection because that would help me download the HD movies faster and I'd have the opportunity to kick both disk formats out of my living room. We're still far from a decent download time with a 20GB movie taking up at least half a day to download on an ADSL/Cable connection but the speed of Internet connections will improve over the next years.

And another thing. HD resolution is here and it will stay here. But no one is stopping you from using a hardware scaler which can upsample the SD DVD content and show it in full HD splendor. Xbox 360 uses an internal scaler but PS3 does not have the same ability. Of course, a scaled movie won't look as good as the original HD content but it will definitely be better than the SD source. And Oppo still has the best DVD scalers on the market.

At the moment, HD-DVD has the lead but with all the advantages it brings, the situation could change in a matter of weeks. Scalers still have the best price/quality ratio and SSDs are around the corner. Although they are expensive, in 2 years they could wipe the floor with both hard disks and optical media. Remember that next time you go out to buy a new HD disk.